Cambriolage
by Stuffoutsidethetardis
Summary: Anna breaks into Elsa's room, and with it, into her life.
1. Decisions

Anna swallowed and wondered again if she should. If she dared. She took a look at the hairpin in her right hand, clammed between her fingers, and looked back to the lock in front of her.

It was really pretty. Not that she'd expect any less, of course. She didn't remember much of what her sister looked like, but she remembered her pretty blue eyes and silky silver hair that would catch the light's reflection just like the snow would when winter fell and they had gone out to build a snowman.

She often wondered if Elsa was as pretty as snow, but she always came to the same conclusion, she couldn't decide. Anna wasn't very good at making decisions. Something she was experiencing right now.

Kristoff had told her how to pick a lock, just for fun, and she'd tried it on nearly all the broom closets in the castle, and her own door, several times. Now she was standing in front of another door, where she'd stood many times before, rejected. This time, no one would reject her.

She bit her lip in concentration and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, leaning over the lock, staring at it with eyes that had curiously become greener over the years, replacing the icy blue she was born with. The same blue her sister's eyes had, she remembered vividly. She wondered if hers had changed colour, too.

Mentally shaking her thoughts from her head (not really, because that would be silly), she pried the hairpin into the lock with ease that was only achieved after many, many attempts.

Her heart leapt into her throat as she waited nervously for the small click as she forced the metal into the resisting keyhole. A small victory smile appeared on her face as she heard it, almost inaudible, but there nevertheless. Then, the nerves struck again. She waited a few seconds in complete silence and stillness, not sure if she hoped that her sister had heard her, or the opposite.

Her fingers trembled as she retracted the pin from the lock and slid it back into her hair. She slid her tongue over her front teeth as she collected all of her courage. Sadly, it wasn't enough, so she decided to knock first. She could walk in later, when she wouldn't get a reply, she reasoned.

A nagging part of her that she preferred to ignore suggested an idea again, a thought that had crossed her mind many times. What if she was dead? What if Anna would walk inside to find a decayed, frozen corpse there, starved or died from lack of social contact, or boredom.

Anna didn't know if that was possible, but it seemed like a plausible option, dying from being alone for so long. She was pretty sure she wouldn't survive that. She remembered how her sister's eyes used to shine when Anna convinced her to play in the middle of the night, and she prayed silently that she would see those eyes again without the glaze of death weakening them.

She figured she had waited long enough without getting an answer to her timid knocks, so she collected some more courage and finally pushed open the door.


	2. Shadows

The weather was bright. It probably wasn't warm, but it was certainly clear outside.

Resting her head in her gloved hands, Elsa sighed. She didn't have to look away from the window to know her room was cold and dark, because it always was. She wished it would be anything else instead. She was half sick of the shadows.

She longed for other colours than the sharp, frosty blue that was permanently etched into her life.

Everywhere she went, it followed. It was in her eyes, her hair was a weak imitation of it and somehow, her entire wardrobe was filled with it, in every shade you could imagine, except the colour of the sky she longed for.

All the weak, pale, sharp or bitingly cold blue was making her feel sick, her own reflection laughing at her desperation to find something colourful.

For Elsa, the blue had turned into grey. She couldn't see the difference between her room and the ice, that shot so irregularly from her hands, covering the floor and walls, anymore.

So all she did was stare out of her window, musing how the colour of the sky was so different from her own blues, wondering how the shade of the trees could be created from mixing that same blue with the sparkling yellow of the sun.

This was how she spent her days. Sad, she knew. But there was nothing left to do. Sometimes, she would take one of the many books from the high case they were stocked in, and she'd read. But she never found much pleasure in it, as the books her parents had so lovingly provided her with, were dull and unadventurous, non-fiction and she'd bet half of them were about the trading relationships between Arendelle and the adjacent kingdoms.

So she would return to her window, where she'd sit for hours, where she was sitting right now, when she heard it.

She instinctively brushed it off as one of the servants passing by at first. But the sound was too distinctive for that and she felt her hands tense dangerously under her gloves, which had become a second skin. She heard it again.

A small click, not louder than as if someone had tightened their jaw and clicked their teeth together. It was the first noise to reach her room that wasn't made by her. She quickly checked her clock. Twice a day, a servant would place a plate filled with the most delicious meals in front of her door and she would wait exactly thirty seconds before opening her door, seizing it, and shutting herself in again. Pathetic, she knew, but it was expected of her.

This wasn't the sound of a plate hitting the carpet, and it wasn't the time either. It was the sound of the lock opening, from the outside, as if opened by a key. Elsa listened closely again, but it was silent.

She breathed out softly, not realizing she had held her breath until her lungs sharply reminded her. The very tips of her gloves, blue gloves, were frozen, and her shoulders were tense, toes curled inside her boots. She slowly released the tension, loosening the tight spring that her body had become.

She closed her eyes, and decided that she had imagined it all, a mere daydream. Until she heard the creaking of hinges, a sound never produced except by her own hands.


End file.
